


Looked like you needed saving

by la_dissonance



Category: Atomic Blonde (2017)
Genre: Alternate Ending, Breathplay, F/F, Fix-It, Magical Healing Kink, Recovery, Trauma, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-19 08:57:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13120425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/la_dissonance/pseuds/la_dissonance
Summary: "I would have died for you," Delphine says after a while. "I was ready to."





	Looked like you needed saving

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rosecake](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosecake/gifts).



> Hi, rosecake! I forget what fandom I was searching when I stumbled across your letter; once I got there we had so many fandoms/interests in common I had a hard time picking just one. I've been wanting to write an Atomic Blonde fix-it fic that saves Delphine ever since I saw the movie (she does not deserve to die!! her death is honestly so preventable that it's way less plausible for her to die than not, I will never not be mad about this), and your prompts gave me some exciting new ideas. I hope you enjoy this!!
> 
> Thank you kindly to the awesome were_duck for their last-minute and very thorough beta work; any remaining errors or inaccuracies are my own.

Not even five minutes after sending Delphine from her hotel room — _leave_ , she'd said, and she'd meant _get out while you still can, don't let me take you down with me_ — Lorraine is back on the street, following a hunch to Delphine's apartment. As she walks, the hunch firms into a conviction, and she quickens her pace. By the time she rounds the corner to Delphine's street she's at a brisk jog, certain that something terrible is about to happen.

She rings the bell once, out of courtesy. Maybe Delphine is packing an overnight bag now, or coming down the stairs, about to pass Lorraine on her way to the train station, to safety. 

But Lorraine hasn't made herself a successful career by trusting that maybe the best will happen, so when she isn't buzzed in on her first ring, she shoots the lock out without pausing and kicks her way in. The cacophony of fireworks masks the crack of the gunshot perfectly.

The stairs take twice as long as they should, Lorraine's exhausted muscles not cooperating with her attempt to push them into a third or fourth wind. The worst of Lorraine's fears spring into life when she rounds the last landing and sees the door to Delphine's apartment hanging open, the muted sounds of a struggle resolving into terrifyingly vivid detail as she staggers inside. 

Percival has Delphine in a crushing headlock, garrote drawn tight across her throat and a cruel grimace of effort twisting his face. A knife protrudes from his back; clearly this has been going on for some time. Lorraine should never have let Delphine go off on her own; should have followed her immediately if she did. Delphine loses her footing and Percival follows her down; she's scrambling to relieve the pressure on her airway but reaching, reaching — 

Lorraine must take it all in in an instant, but it feels like time has stopped. 

Time moves slowly even after Lorraine forces herself back into motion. Delphine's eyes meet hers, panicked; Lorraine raises her gun; Percival snarls and yanks on the wire; she shoots; he staggers back.

Staggers, but doesn't release Delphine. A terrible animal viciousness flashes in his eyes: he has found his prize and he won't let go, reason be damned. Lorraine shoots again and the bullet finds his arm this time; he howls, his grip loosening reflexively. Delphine slumps to the floor, eyes watering, retching and heaving as Percival lurches away.

Lorraine lets him go. She hears him clanging down the fire escape as she crosses the room to crouch down by Delphine's side; she doesn't care. She kisses Delphine's hair, lowers herself gingerly down to sit on the floor against the protest of all her injuries, gathers Delphine close.

"It's over," she whispers, stroking Delphine's hair off her face with shaking fingers. _You're safe_ , she thinks, as she does a visual sweep of the room to make sure that's true: the front door she'd closed behind her, the empty fire escape, the gun on the bed, the lines of sight from the other rooms. No suspicious sounds, or lack of sounds. No surprises.

They stay like that for a while, Delphine collapsed across Lorraine's chest, Lorraine slumped against the foot of the bed, both gasping for air as they come down from their adrenaline highs. Lorraine feels like she might never come down, like she's been at the peak so long it's stretched into a plateau, all sensation held at arm's length, as if she's still crushed in the river's numbing depths.

Delphine curls a fist in Lorraine's coat, seeking non-existent body heat, and Lorraine comes back into her body enough to realize that she's clutching Delphine to herself tightly, probably too tightly, that Delphine's shivering in nothing but her lingerie. 

"I would have killed him," Delphine says, voice rough and barely there, half-wrecked from her brush with asphyxiation. 

"I know," Lorraine says, although she had known no such thing. "I'll kill him for you, after." After they're done bringing each other back to themselves, she means. Let him run for a while, let him grow afraid of what might be coming after him.

"Good," Delphine says.

The light in Delphine's apartment is all warm sodium yellow, turning everything it touches to gold. It doesn't look like the scene of an attempted murder, even with the drops of Percival's blood slowly soaking into the carpet. It looks like the refuge it should have been. Lorraine digs a pack of cigarettes out of her coat pocket, lights one, inhales. 

It doesn't do much to settle her. Underneath the nicotine, she's still on high alert, her body unconvinced that the danger has passed. From the way Delphine's heartbeat hammers under her palm, Lorraine suspect she feels the same.

Delphine draws in a shaky breath and says, "When I close my eyes I can still feel it. Like it's still happening, like it never stopped happening." She shudders, the fine tremors worsening. "I had a gun. Maybe if I had been able to shoot him, it would be over now."

"Maybe," Lorraine echoes, doubtful. She thinks about the times she's stared her own death in the face, the ones her brain picks to replay in heart-stopping detail late at night when the city's too quiet. There's no rhyme or reason to it.

'You don't think it will go away." Delphine shifts in her arms and looks up at her. There's an angry red line starting to come up across the column of her neck. Before Lorraine has to think of anything to say, Delphine's mouth twists up in an ironic curl and she says, "You know, I actually like it, normally. My first thought when he got that wire on my neck was 'oh no, this is going to ruin choking for me forever.' I was too angry to be scared."

This startles Lorraine into a wan smile: they haven't had enough time together for her to have even found that out yet. "Pity. That's men for you, always taking what they have no right to."

Delphine nods, rueful, then winces. "Fuck."

Half an idea occurs to Lorraine. She holds herself still, waiting for the rest of it to assemble itself, and when she can't see any flaws, she says, "If you thought it would help, I could choke you now. Give you a new memory to write over the bad one before it takes hold." Delphine's eyes go impossibly wide, and Lorraine repeats, "Only if it would help, Delphine. It's only an offer," because if she fucks up and makes this worse, she may never be able to tuck that hurt away.

But Delphine cuts her off. "Yes," she says, capturing Lorraine's mouth in a biting kiss for emphasis. "Yes, _please_ , make it go away."

"Not here," Lorraine says. "On the bed."

Delphine stands, strips out of her lingerie, crawls onto the bed. She fishes the gun out from under the pillow and puts the safety on before dropping it into an open nightstand drawer.

Lorraine follows more slowly, levering herself up on the edge of the bed. She sheds her coat, methodically shrugging out of one arm and then the other, careful not to twist too far and wrench anything, and steps out of her pants. The rest of her clothes feel like too much of an effort when Delphine needs her _now_ ; she leaves them on.

Under her hands, Delphine is tense and jumpy. She kisses Lorraine hungrily and keens in frustration when Lorraine's hand stroking down her side makes her flinch away. "Fix it, please. I can't stay like this forever," she hisses into the space between their mouths. 

"It's okay, I'm here," Lorraine says. They're lying on their sides; it's as much as Lorraine can do to prop herself up on one elbow. She gets a hand on Delphine's shoulder and pushes until she falls onto her back, then slides her hand to cover Delphine's throat, not even applying the barest hint of pressure. "Like this? Or —" and she moves her hand to Delphine's other shoulder, tugs up and shifts until they're lying back to front, Lorraine's chin hooked over Delphine's shoulder and her hand at her throat again. "Like this? I could use both hands this way."

"The first way. I need to see you," Delphine gasps. She turns onto her back again and Lorraine makes room. Lorraine wants to thoroughly lay claim to Delphine, erase all of Percival's traces on her and replace them with her own. She feels a certain dark thrill at the idea of replacing Percival's body with hers, using the same position to obliterate him completely, but getting to watch Delphine's face through this, letting her see that Lorraine won't leave her, is suddenly far more important. 

Lorraine takes Delphine's hand and presses it into the pillow between their heads, closes her fingers into a fist. 

"If it stops working, open your hand and I stop, all right? Any time you need to see that I'll stop, tell me. This is for you."

Delphine flexes her hand, opens it once, testing, then closes it firmly. "Now, please."

Lorraine goes slow. Ordinarily, at her best, she'd crouch over Delphine and use both hands, give her everything she needed all. at once. She's far from her best now, though, so she warms Delphine's body to the idea of receiving pleasure with one roaming hand, a kiss on her neck, a thigh between her legs. 

When Delphine's rolling her hips up against Lorraine's thigh and making small, insistent sounds, Lorraine circles her throat, finds the pulse points and squeezes, gently, carefully. Mindful of the injury there, mindful of what she's layering on top of it. 

Delphine arches up. Her eyes fly open, she gasps to fill her lungs against the dizziness. Her fist stays closed. Lorraine keeps holding. Something deep in her shoulder twinges; she ignores it. Delphine's eyes start to water, she looks up at Lorraine all wordless begging. 

"I've got you," Lorraine says. She can imagine the sparkling blackness creeping up around the edges of Delphine's vision, the rushing in her ears, the breathless chasm opening below her. "You can fight me, let it take you, anything you need. I'm right here."

Delphine twists under Lorraine's hand, and when she begins to go slack, Lorraine eases off. Delphine gasps, melting back into the bed, eyes sliding blissfully closed. Lorraine gets her hand between her legs and helps her along, working her up and then choking her again just as she's about to tip over the edge, diverting all that energy down a branch in the path and making Delphine moan, thrashing.

She holds her there long enough for Delphine to sink into it; short enough that Delphine can't help but know Lorraine's there to pull her out the other side. Lorraine doesn't count how many rounds it takes, how many reassurances she murmurs into Delphine's ear or how many tears she kisses from the corner of her eye. It's enough; that's what matters.

When Delphine comes, right off the crest of a fresh lungful of air, it startles Lorraine with its ferocity, even though she was the one stoking the fires. Delphine curls into her, gasping, clawing at her back with her need to be close, and stays that way even after the last tremors pass. 

Delphine tugs at Lorraine's shirt, a wordless question.

"Next time," Lorraine says. Her body's wrung out, running on fumes. Lorraine breathes in Delphine's scent, sharp with sweat and arousal over the fading perfume she put on that morning, warm and _alive_. God, Lorraine could use another cigarette. Carefully, she levers herself up to sit back against the headboard, wincing as the scratched-over bruises on her back make contact. Delphine just shifts until her head is pillowed on Lorraine's thigh, idly strokes her skin. 

"You know, I would have died for you," Delphine says after a while. "I was ready to."

Lorraine's hands still in Delphine's hair where they've been stroking. She swallows down the bile that rises in her throat. "That would have served absolutely no purpose," she says. "Don't talk like that." And then, because maybe it will have a better chance of reaching Delphine's poet's soul, she says, quieter, "I don't know how I would be able to bear it, without you."

"Oh," Delphine says.

"So don't make me find out," Lorraine says, meaning it to be harsh, a threat. It comes out all raw, though, and Lorraine supposes that's just about right: she still feels hollowed out from losing James. If they take Delphine from her, there might not be anything left to scrape out.

Delphine props herself up so she can look Lorraine in the eye. She bites her lip. "I just meant, this is real for me. Even if it isn't for you. You said these were all fake relationships."

Something in Lorraine's chest cracks. "Well. I'm thinking of getting out of the business."

Delphine's eyes spark and then shine, impossibly hopeful. "You'd just walk away?"

"I'll have to finish the job," Lorraine says. "But this is my last one."

Delphine crawls into her lap and kisses her, infinitely tender around her split lip, cradling her face and searching her eyes. "You mean it."

Lorraine takes Delphine's hands, brings her knuckles to her mouth and brushes a kiss across them. "Meet me in Paris, two days from now. Give me somewhere to come home to, when I leave."

"Yes," Delphine says, and Lorraine can see right down into the transparent heart of her, where a kernel of potential grows: the future, together, safe.


End file.
